


When the Bough Breaks

by barefootwithneonhands



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Demons, Gen, One Shot, Spoilers through 01x02, Violence against Children, Why Is It Always Demons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 07:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6070918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barefootwithneonhands/pseuds/barefootwithneonhands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. And it will be waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Bough Breaks

**Author's Note:**

> Content Note: This story is a bit... dark. Check the tags.

The small human knelt beside his nest and prayed. They were the small, soft prayers of a child and it ignored the sting of the words scratching its skin.

S _ebastian_ , it whispered.  _Sebastian_. It ran a shadowy claw down the back of the child’s soft neck.  _Sebastian_. The boy gasped.  _Shall I tell you a story, Sebastian?_

Sebastian Torres hunched his tiny shoulders away from its touch. It pressed closer, crowding the boy as the room’s lights flickered and dimmed.  _One day you will be a great hero, Sebastian. Shall I tell you the stories of your victories to come? Of the pale horse you will ride and the great sword you will swing?_

The boy shuddered. “Don’t wanna. Wanna be a fireman.”

It smiled and far away it could hear the sweet sound of crackling flames and war drums.  _Oh there will be fire, Sebastian. So very much fire._ The scent of the charnel house began to creep into the boy’s bedroom.  _Whole cities will blaze with our glory before they crumble to ash. Nations will fall. And everyone will look to you and see a hero._   _Do you not wish that?_

“N-no.” The child’s shoulders shook and fat tears streamed down his face. “I don’t like people looking at me. ‘It’s scary.”

_Then they will avert their eyes. We will make them afraid to look. And we will pluck their eyes like grapes and crush them beneath your heel if they do. Would that not be better?_

“Maybe.” The boy peeked up at it. It would have been the work of a moment to snatch out the child’s wide brown eyes. To dash them to the ground and laugh as the boy squished them between his toes while he danced and screamed and clawed at the gaping holes in his face.

It had done so before.

But Sebastian was of more use to it whole in body and mind. It nearly had his soul, and that would be enough. For the moment.

A soft knock thudded against the door. The boy turned and held up his clasped hands as the door opened. “I’m saying my prayers, Daddy.”

It looked at the exhausted man leaning alone against the peeling, cracked doorjamb. Its greatest triumph in shaping Sebastian had been carving the boy’s father off from the family like a dead tree limb. The worthless man had proved too dull for it to shape into a tool but had been some use in siring the boy. The boy who would ride at the head of its armies and rain down hell upon the weak and fearful.

Long experience told it that the entire dry, cracked tree would soon ignite.

“I’ve told you not to leave the window open in here, Sebastian. It’s freezing. We can’t heat the whole neighborhood. We’re not made of money.” The man moved to the window, threw back the curtains, and pushed down on the window sash. Which was locked tight. And far too heavy for the boy to lift by himself. He frowned and turned on his son. 

“And it stinks to high heaven, Sebastian. Did you sneak in a mouse and forget to feed it again?”

“No, Daddy.” Sebastian shuffled his feet and tugged at the hem of his striped yellow shirt. “It was Tall Paul.” He moved so that Paul stood between the boy and his father’s ire. Excellent.

“Tall Paul’s not real, Sebastian,” the man said with steel in his voice. It smiled, though he could not see its rows and rows of jagged teeth. His eyes were old and weak, clouded by belief in a tidy universe in which humans were alone and told themselves stories in the dark. Alone, and safe. Children were blessed with such greater clarity.

 _Of course I am, useless man. As you well know._ It looked down at the child at its side.  _Sebastian. Do you see how your father lies to you?_

The small boy studied his father. “Yes.” The man sagged from the weight of too little sleep and too much responsibility, and was beginning to look like vermin run to ground by a wild beast.

_Why do you think he would lie to you?_

“Yes what, Sebastian,” he snapped. He rubbed his hands against his bare arms as his eyes darted around the room. Its smile widened.

_Do you see how he looks everywhere but at me? And you?_

“Yes,” said the boy. It savored the sound of dawning realization.

“Answer me, Sebastian! Yes what?” The man’s eyes locked on his son. It was pleased to see the battle between terror and anger warring in their depths. The boy stepped back from him and closer to it.

“Robert?” The woman’s voice was faint, but it heard her slow, plodding tread on the stairs. Its long thick tongue flicked out and licked its lips.

 _And why_ , it prompted,  _would he not look at the place where I am unless he knows that I am here?_

The boy’s brow furrowed in deep concentration. “Why don’t you look at Tall Paul, Daddy?”

The universe turned on a trembling knife’s edge and then the man lunged toward his son. He grabbed the boy’s thin arms and shook him like a rag doll. “Paul. Is. Not. Real,” he screamed, punctuating each word with a shake.

“Daddy!” Sebastian’s wail froze him and the boy began to sob. “Daddy, please! Daddy, I’m sorry!”

The universe shattered.

“Robert!” The mother’s fury was a battle cry. Her anguish, a delight. And her complete lack of surprise was the hot, fetid breath of dawning victory against its skin. She flew into the room and shoved the child away from the man. Sebastian’s cries grew louder as he crashed into the pine boards of his bed and bounced off.

The man gaped at the crumpled boy and then rounded on his wife, fists half raised before horror dragged them back to his sides where they hung helpless.

“Get away from my son,” she snarled, shoving at the man.

The man, taller by a foot and still strong enough to put up a fight for all that his shirts had begun to hang loose around him like a funeral shroud, reeled away from her. “Maria, what are you doing?” His foot snagged in a lumpy section of the boy’s rainbow rug and he banged into the closed closet door.

She advanced, shoving him again hard up against the door and away from their cowering child. “What are _you_ doing, Robert? How dare you come in here and lay a hand on our son!”

The man looked over her shoulder and towards the boy curled in a tight ball against his nest, hand clutching a bloody cut on his forehead. “You’re the one who hurt him, Maria.” He pointed to Sebastian and scowled.

The shadows gathering in the corners of the room seethed. It shushed them with a hissed command. Blood was in the air but on this night it was not meant for them.

The woman turned and looked down. “ _Madre di Dios_.” It flinched. Her eyes flicked to it and then back to her son. She crouched beside the boy, who cringed away from her. She reached out a tentative hand and then her head snapped back to the man. “Get out.” Her voice echoed with the finality of the last nail in a coffin lid.  
  
“Maria,” the man said, shocked.  
  
“Get out. Of this house.” She stood and started toward him. The man stumbled back blindly toward the hall. “Get out of this house and away from us. Go to a hotel tonight. Go sleep in the park. I don’t care.”

Scorning the death rattle of yet another broken marriage it bent low over its prize. _Sebastian_ , it cooed. The boy curled tighter into himself. _Sebastian_. _I shall protect you, Sebastian._ _Your mother hurt you. Your father lied to you. But I am your friend. With me, you will never be hurt._

The boy’s quiet, choked sobs trailed off into silence. It listened as the last of the harsh words faded from the air and the man stomped away from his broken family and down the stairs. _Sebastian_ , it whispered.

“Paul,” a tiny voice whispered back.

And then the woman was there, grabbing the boy from the floor and clutching him to her chest. She rocked him, her face a frozen mask of devastation as she watched the last of the life she’d built blow away on the wind. She choked back a sob, and then looked down at the top of her son’s head. “Oh baby. Oh baby, I’m sorry. Mommy didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”

The boy made a growling sound and struggled against her. Struggled to breathe. Struggled with the fear that the two people who had been his entire universe were now the most terrifying monsters in the world.

The boy was wrong, of course. So very wrong. But he would not learn that until much later.

The woman blinked back tears and released her child. They both sat in the dim light of the room, panting. It circled them, coming to stand by the dull smear of blood splashed across the side of the nest. The woman tracked its movement, eyes resting on the blood before jerking back to her son.  

“Oh baby,” she reached out a trembling hand to brush his mussed hair away from the wound and Sebastian scooted back. Towards it. Perfection. “Oh baby.” The woman sighed. “Mommy is very sorry. Can you… Mommy shouldn’t have done that. Mommy is sorry.”

 _She lies to you, Sebastian._ The boy sniffled and looked up at it. It held out a beckoning hand. The boy hesitated, and then crawled toward it, bare knees scritch scratching across his gaily patterned rug. The woman looked as though hell had opened before her as she watched her son’s slow progress. The boy came to rest at its feet, snuggling into its thin leg and sticking a thumb in his mouth. Tears crept down her cheeks as she crossed herself.

It stroked Sebastian’s downy hair and then stood tall to stare at the woman.  _Soon_ , it promised her.  _Soon I will take your child. Soon I will make him my own. I will mold him in the dark wilderness. And I will send him back to gnaw the heart from your breast._

She shuffled back a few frantic inches on her knees. It smiled again and let the darkness and stench begin to creep further into the room. Her eyes flew to her son.

“Sebastian?” Her voice trembled and she pressed her lips together before trying again. “Baby? I’m… Mommy’s going to go downstairs and make some hot cocoa. Would you like some?”

The boy shook his head.

“Sebastian, you should come downstairs with Mommy. At least let me put an Elmo Band-Aid on your head.”

“No,” Sebastian said around the thumb in his mouth. “M’ sleepy. Wanna go to bed.”

“Okay.” She squared her shoulders. “Okay. Let’s tuck you in so you can get some sleep.”

“No,” the boy roared, popping his wet thumb from his mouth and curling both hands into the hem of his shirt. “No, Mommy. I want Tall Paul to tuck me in. Go away, Mommy.” He turned his back on her and pulled himself up the bed, tugging at his bright rocket ship bedspread. A pillow bounced to the floor.

The woman bowed her head, and it savored the delicious despair coming off her in waves. It bent far, far down until it was level with her delicate ear.   _Yes. The tighter your fist the more quickly the child becomes mine. Fight and lose. Do nothing, and lose._   _And know that when your death arrives on slow, slicing wings,”_ it breathed deep of her heady sorrow and fear, _“that it was inevitable”._

She stilled. It straightened and turned back to Sebastian, who had yanked his bedspread half off his little nest and was climbing defiantly toward his headboard. Children were such sweet engines of chaos and destruction. It smiled, pleased with the child’s efforts.

It heard the mother rise and walk toward the open door. “All right baby. Good night. Sleep tight. Sweet dreams.” She shuffled out the door. And then paused. “Mommy loves you. Remember that? Mommy loves you.”

Sebastian remained silent on his bed, eyes locked on his blue sheets. As the door closed it bent down and picked up a fallen pillow scattered with cartoon stars.  _Sebastian_ , it whispered, putting the pillow behind the boy’s head and drawing the bedclothes up to his small chest,  _shall I tell you a story? A story of my friend Simon. He looks forward to being your friend too._

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Unbetaed, as usual. All mistakes are mine.  
> 2) So far I'm not sure we've seen a demon able to move something as substantial as a pillow. But what the hell.  
> 3) I wrote this as a one shot before 02x03. I had some outtakes that didn't quite fit with this piece, and now... well. It's possible that I'll be revisiting this one to add more chapters later. (provided I can figure out how one DOES that on AO3)


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